She turned slowly to face it, cradling the bowl of water in the palm of one hand and letting the other fall to the hilt of her sword.
The Wraith let out a low, chuffing noise that Emily did not at first recognize for what it was. The creature was laughing. Hair stood up on the back of her neck. She scanned the room, confirming what she already knew. The only way in or out was back through the arch by which she’d entered, and in which the Wraith now stood.
Its cloak hung in the air against one side of the arch, as if the Wraith’s insubstantial form was leaning casually against the stone and plaster. It seemed to have its arms crossed at its chest, though it was hard to tell amidst the myriad folds of the black cloth.
“Tsk tsk. And armed, too. Calm yourself,” the Wraith hissed. “Your sword would be as effective against me as a palmful of water against the ocean. If I wanted to harm you, it would already be done.”
Emily stared into the shadowy depths of the Wraith’s hood, wishing she’d see anything, anything at all there. A glint of an eye or even the faintest movement of flesh would be better than the void that stared back at her absent of any humanity.
“I just came down to get water for Celine,” she said, holding out the bowl. “She’s ill. I had no way of knowing who was up or not.”
“Perhaps,” the thing said, not moving. They stared at one another for a long moment.
Emily shrugged with an indifference she did not feel and started forward, still with one hand on her sword.
“Now that I have the water,” she said, “I’m going back upstairs.”
She approached the arch, intending to step past the Wraith and get the hell out of Dodge as quickly as she could.
The Wraith still did not move. It waited until she was already past and heading down the hall before speaking again.
“There’s more to you than you say, girl.”
The words were not accusatory, or even questioning. They were utterly devoid of inflection of any kind.
Emily paused, waiting to see if the Wraith would continue, but not daring to look back.
“I can’t read your intentions,” it said thoughtfully. “Now…why would that be? You’re just an empty space in the room to me, and there must be a reason why. Yes, you’re not telling us something.”
Emily’s heart hammered in her chest. The silence spun out for so long that she thought the Wraith must have left, and she was about to hurry back to the room she shared with Celine, when the Wraith spoke again.
“You should reconsider. Those with secrets seldom last long in the Dragon’s Brood.”
Emily waited, expecting more, but the Wraith added nothing. She looked back over her shoulder into the kitchen. It was empty. The Wraith had gone.
* * *
Celine was still asleep, despite the sunlight that, no matter how gray, had still been able to fill the room with its brilliance.
As Emily approached the bed with the bowl of water in her hands, Rascal raised his head to examine her with an expression that seemed to say, “It’s about time you did something useful.” She shot the kitsper a dirty look, but Rascal only flicked his ears at her with supreme indifference.
She knelt down beside the bed and gently shook Celine.
“Cel,” she said softly. “I’ve got some water for you.”
Celine mumbled a feeble protest, but didn’t open her eyes. The thin sheet that covered her was soaked with sweat, and Emily could feel the heat coming off of her body in waves.
“C’mon, Cel. You have to drink something. You’re running a fever.”
Celine opened her eyes and looked at her. Her gaze was distant and bloodshot, lacking any recognition.
“C’mon, Cel,” Emily said again, and she got an arm under Celine’s shoulders and helped her to sit up.
“Drink,” she said, and she held the cup to Celine’s parched and cracked lips.
Celine drank tentatively at first, then thirstily, grabbing Emily’s wrist and forcing her to tip the water into her mouth in large gulps.
When it was gone, Emily lowered her back down to the pillow. Celine’s hand reached out and absently stroked the top of Rascal’s head, and her gaze sought Emily’s again.
“Thanks…Derek,” she slurred, before closing her eyes again and drifting back into sleep.
Emily looked down at her, feeling helpless. Somehow she didn’t think she’d be able to find any aspirin in this fucked up place. Just what in hell was she supposed to do?
“How is she?”
For the second time that morning, Emily jumped as a voice spoke behind her. She turned, getting to her feet, and found Corbbmacc standing in the doorway. He looked pale and haggard, and there were dark circles under his eyes. He didn’t look as if he’d slept all night, and the thought gave Emily a bitter surge of satisfaction.
She started toward him, still clutching the little wooden bowl. With every step, she felt the anger inside her building, roaring rapids against a dam on the verge of collapse.
She placed a hand in the center of his chest and shoved him roughly backward through the doorway, letting her momentum carry them both out into the hall. She reached behind her, pulling the door closed, then turned to face him.
“Like you give a damn,” she spat, gritting her teeth and feeling herself shaking with anger. “She’s incoherent with fever—maybe worse—all because you…you…”
She stopped as words failed her, staring into Corbbmacc’s tired face. He wasn’t protesting. He wasn’t saying anything at all. He was merely watching her storm and doing nothing to defend himself.
It was the last straw.
She threw the bowl at him. Corbbmacc ducked just in time, and it hit the wall behind him before clattering to the floor and rolling away down the hall.
They stared at one another in silence for a long minute, and Emily felt the rage drain away as quickly as it had come. Heat rose in her face, and she looked away.
“Sorry,” Corbbmacc said at last. “It’s hard not to duck when someone throws something at you.”
“What?”
“I said…”
“I heard what you said,” she said wearily, falling back against the wall and sliding down it to sit on the floor. “I just don’t understand…”
“I deserve it,” he said, sinking to the floor beside her. “What I did to her was totally out of line. It’s just…it’s Mona…she’s my sister, you know?”
Perhaps for the first time since she’d met him, Emily saw a deeply genuine emotion in Corbbmacc’s eyes that was neither contempt nor arrogance. She saw guilt there. Guilt, but no regret. There was more, too, but she didn’t know this boy well enough to parse what she was seeing.
“No,” she said bitterly. “I guess I don’t. I don’t have any brothers or sisters.”
Even as she said it, she realized it wasn’t true. In her old life, Casey had been a sister of sorts, but there had been secrets between them that she dearly regretted now. How many times had she wished she could have changed that since finding herself at Seven Skies? A dozen? A hundred?
But in the last few weeks, she’d found a friendship that ran much deeper with Celine. Celine knew all of Emily’s secrets and had secrets of her own—secrets she had shared willingly. They were surely as close as any two sisters could possibly be. There was a bond there that ran deep, cemented by shared terrors and a mutual need for friendship. Though she had known Casey for years, Celine was the one with whom the bond felt timeless.
Tears stung her eyes, and Emily blinked them back fiercely. She would not cry. Not now, and not in front of this boy. She wouldn’t, dammit.
“She’s like your sister,” Corbbmacc said quietly, seeming to read her mind. There was moisture at the corners of his eyes now, but he neither acknowledged it nor brushed it away.
“Yes,” Emily said, her voice sounding thick and strange in her own ears.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, but this time there was no doubting his meaning.
They sat in sile
nce for a moment, only looking at one another, each fighting a silent battle with emotions that had been worn raw. From somewhere deep in the house, the sounds of early morning activity broke the stillness as the residents began to stir.
“Paige wants you to come with me into Hellsgate today,” Corbbmacc said. “I’m going to scavenge for food. She wants you to see what it’s like here because she knows you don’t trust the Brood.”
Emily raised her eyebrows.
“It’s written all over your face. Paige isn’t stupid. She thinks if you see what things are like here, thanks to Marianne, you’ll understand why what we’re doing is so important.”
He shrugged and looked away.
“Maybe you will and maybe you won’t. I’m just relaying the message. She wanted you to know it isn’t an order. You’re welcome to stay here if you don’t want to come with me.” He ran a hand through his hair, then looked back at her, lowering his voice. “I thought I’d see if I could steal some of the medical supplies from the guards, too. That’s a lot riskier than going for food, and Paige would absolutely forbid it if she knew I was going to try. But once it’s done, ” he shrugged, “what’s she going to say? I don’t know if there’d be anything to help her,” he jerked his head at the closed door beside them, “but it can’t hurt…and it’s my fault she’s ill.”
A thread of hope wormed its way into Emily’s heart. Medical supplies? She wasn’t sure what would constitute medical supplies in this crazy, backwards world, but it was worth a try. Surely, it would be better than nothing.
“What about Celine?” she asked. “Someone should watch over her…give her water…”
They both looked down the hall at the small wooden bowl that lay overturned on the floor.
“I’ll ask one of the nurses to look after her. Mona seems to be doing fine now. They don’t all need to stay down there with her.”
“Okay,” Emily said. “Thanks.”
“They named him this morning,” Corbbmacc said abruptly, looking down at his hands.
“What?”
“Mona…and Garrett…they named him…my…my nephew. They did it at dawn.”
With all that had happened, Emily had entirely forgotten about the infant whose birth had been the cause of all this misery.
“What did they name him?”
Corbbmacc paused, and a line creased his brow. He spoke slowly, pronouncing the unfamiliar syllables very carefully.
“Miraculum,” he said. “It’s some old language that Mona learned out of one of her books. It means ‘miracle’.”
Emily thought about her trip through the looking glass. She thought of their escape from Seven Skies. She thought of Celine’s power that had first healed the boy, then Mona.
She looked for a long time at Corbbmacc. “My nephew” he’d called the baby downstairs. He’d said it haltingly, as if the concept was still an alien one to him, but he’d said it all the same.
Her gaze went back to the closed door, behind which Celine slept on, baking with fever.
Please God, she prayed. Please…just one more miracle.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Emily watched as Corbbmacc pried a square metal grate loose from the stones at their feet. The alley behind the safe house was silent and deserted. Even with the scarf around her face, the stench of smoke and decay was nearly overwhelming. Ash fell around them in a steady shower, coating their shoulders and piling up against the buildings like drifts of dirty snow.
The morning sunlight was filtered through a haze of dark smoke, casting a dim shadow over everything. It put her in mind of old black-and-white holiday films, where the heroes tromped through winter wonderlands painted in a thousand shades of gray. A shroud of silence hung over them—a hush so deep that she felt like a burglar breaking into a church on Tuesday. Hellsgate, this part of it anyway, felt like a ghost town.
Corbbmacc stood at the edge of the hole he’d uncovered and studied her over his own scarf.
“Any minute now,” he said, his voice low, “you’re going to start asking more of your infernal questions.”
Emily started to protest, but Corbbmacc raised a hand to forestall her.
“That’s just a fact. You know it is. I just want to get this out of the way now. You need to see first. That’s why Paige wanted you to come with me, even despite the risks. See first, and then later, if you have questions, which I have no doubt you will, I’ll try to answer them… God help me.”
She saw the corners of his eyes crinkle for the briefest moment but pretended she didn’t.
“Deal?” he asked.
“Okay,” she said. “But let me ask just one thing.”
Corbbmacc rolled his eyes but didn’t object.
“Are we going down into the sewers? Because if it smells this bad up here, I’m not sure I can handle going down there.” She eyed the opening at his feet warily.
Corbbmacc laughed. It was a soft, reluctant sound, and she wondered again what had turned this boy into such a surly, disagreeable soul. There was someone else—someone better—locked away in there somewhere, and she enjoyed seeing glimpses of that other boy sometimes.
“It might’ve been a sewer once,” he said. “Probably was. There aren’t enough people in Hellsgate to need sewers anymore, though.”
But that didn’t tally at all with what Emily had seen the night before from the edge of the forest. Hellsgate had been buzzing with activity. It had to have at least as many people as Seven Skies—likely more.
Corbbmacc was shaking his head. “No more questions. I can see you getting them ready, but hang on to them.” He glanced up and down the alley, then leaned closer and dropped his voice still lower. “We’re going to go get the food first. We’ll fill up our packs, then we’ll try to get the medical stuff. Trust me. You’ll understand more than you want to by the time we’re done. Let’s get moving.” He stepped aside and stared at her expectantly.
“What? I’m supposed to go down first?” She took a step back.
Corbbmacc sighed. “Yes, you are. I have to put the cover back over the entrance. It’s not easy, and I’ve had practice. There’s nothing down there to worry about.”
His irritation, rather than being abrasive, soothed her unease, and she moved to the edge of the hole and looked down. A ladder of heavy chain hung from its lip and led down into darkness.
She sat on the edge of the alley, dangling her feet into the void, and looked back up at Corbbmacc.
“If there are giant two-headed rats down there, I swear I’m never going to forgive you.” She got a grip on the ladder and started down.
Above she heard Corbbmacc mutter to himself. “Hell of a time to get all girly girl.”
She smiled to herself and descended into the dark.
The floor of the tunnel was only a dozen feet below the alley, and she saw Corbbmacc starting down the ladder as soon as her boots crunched in the layer of ash that covered the smooth stones. His form blotted out the gray sunlight for a moment, then she heard a scraping noise as he pulled the grate back into place, plunging them into semi-darkness.
She listened to the clank and rattle of the chains as he made his way down to join her, waiting for her eyes to adjust. It wasn’t as dark as she’d imagined. Thick carpets of moss clung to the walls and glowed with an eerie, greenish light that reminded her, with a sudden pang of nostalgia, of the House of Horrors. The air was cool and damp, but actually smelled better than that of the city above.
They started down the tunnel, the crunch of their boots in the ash and soot deafening in the stillness.
“Won’t someone hear us down here?” she ventured after a time.
“Not likely. Even if they did, they’d think it was just some kind of critter down here.”
Emily stopped, but Corbbmacc kept walking.
“I thought you said there weren’t any giant two-headed rats!” she hissed, hurrying forward again to catch up. Corbbmacc glanced at her sideways.
“I said there was nothing to w
orry about down here. There isn’t. I never said there weren’t any two-headed rats.”
Great, she thought. Corbbmacc’s gone and gotten himself a sense of humor. Just great.
Corbbmacc seemed to know exactly where he was going, leading her through various tunnels that twisted and turned and often seemed to double back upon themselves. Emily had prided herself on her sense of direction all her life, but after a while of navigating the labyrinth, she thought she’d be damn lucky to ever find her way out again without Corbbmacc. How the hell had he learned his way around down here?
From the streets above, she occasionally heard muffled shouts and curses. Now and then, the stones beneath their feet vibrated with the low rumble of what she supposed must be some kind of heavy machinery. Otherwise, though, there was no hint of life from the city above.
Corbbmacc stopped abruptly a little ways down yet another wide corridor. In the sudden silence that fell, Emily thought she heard the rustle of some creature scurrying away. The soft pat of paws on ash and the clatter of claws faded into the darkness. She shivered.
Any humor Corbbmacc might have temporarily acquired had gone, and his face was now set in grim lines. Carefully, he pushed aside curtains of moss from the wall on their right, revealing the smooth stones behind it. They glistened with moisture and gleamed in the phosphorus light.
He leaned toward her and whispered in her ear. “We have to be very quiet. It’s unlikely anyone is inside the storehouse this time of day, but there’s no way to know for sure. Stay close, and stay quiet.”
Emily nodded, not fully understanding, but knowing better than to test his patience with more questions.
Corbbmacc turned back to the wall. He reached out, wedging his fingers into crevices that were nearly invisible in the gloom, and gently slid out a large stone. He set it down at his feet, then pulled out a second stone and set it beside the first.
Faint light fell through the narrow hole, and Corbbmacc motioned her to follow before scrambling through himself.
She found herself in a large basement, crammed with rows of wooden crates. Sunlight filtered dimly through small windows situated near the low ceiling. She heard the sounds of more creatures scurrying away from them. Tiny tracks were visible in the ash that, even here, carpeted the floor.
Haven Lost Page 27